Obama Picking Election Year Fights to Lose

Michael Walsh at National Review has a brilliant post about Obama’s bizarre election year strategy:

Many have commented that last week was the worst week (so far) for the Obama administration, but I don’t think the apparatchiks have quite yet realized how bad things are going to get for them. The decision to insult and attack the Catholic Church was spectacularly stupid, even as a crass political tactic, since there are some 77 million Catholics in the country, representing about a fifth of the population. True, Catholics tend no longer to vote as a bloc (the old FDR coalition has splintered as the Irish and Italians moved out of the cities and up in the world), but a thumb in the eye to one is a thumb in the eye to all, especially when that one is the Cardinal-Archbishop of New York.

Now it’s the judiciary’s turn, and that is likely to end equally badly for the president. Because this isn’t simply an attack on a judge or court because of one ruling; it’s a pre-emptive strike on a decision that has yet to be issued. Worse, it’s not really a blitzkrieg against even the Supreme Court but is rather a direct strike against the Constitution and the Founders. And a majority of Americans understand that the Constitution is the only thing separating us from tyranny on one hand and barbarism on the other. We’ve understood for a while now that Obama finds the separation of powers inconvenient, but this takes his will to power to a new level.

Which brings me back to my point from yesterday: The Punahou Kid is not used to being crossed, nor to being treated with anything less than obeisance. All his life, he’s gotten away with his lighter-than-air act, blissfully aware than even when provably duplicitous he’ll be able to skate, thanks to his protective horde of media buddies, led by Jake Lingle himself.

In the Leftist world-view, there is no yesterday, only the fierce urgency of now in the service of tomorrow — which they feel rightfully belongs to them. Which is why and how stories go down the memory hole, and why Obama will conduct his 2012 campaign by essentially running against himself and promising that next time, things will turn out better. The real “dog whistle” will be Obama signaling to his supporters that “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

The Great Equalizer in the battle between right and left is the Left’s congenital tendency to overreach, to let the mask of affability slip and to reveal themselves for what they really are. By now, the Obama administration’s overt hostility to the country as founded ought to be clear to everyone (for the Left, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature), and it’s mistaken its fleeting supermajority (the result of years of concerted media Bush-bashing) as carte blanche to act on it.

But there’s — thankfully — still a glass ceiling to this fashionable anti-Americanism. Obama was the first Democrat to win a majority of the vote since Jimmy Carter in 1976, and that was a mistake the electorate quickly rectified with the two Reagan landslides. Four years of Nancy Pelosi were all the populace could stomach and it’s likely that the same will be true of Barack Obama. As the Patient Deflection and Unaffordable Care Act demonstrated, even with a supermajority the Democrats still had to resort to bribery, prevarication and legalistic chicanery to get it passed.

Go here to read the rest. Some conservatives have the mistaken belief that Obama is some sort of political genius and are running scared of him. This is a complete misunderstanding of Obama. Obama is a fairly haughty, out of touch snobbish Leftist, who moved to Chicago and embarked on a political career with the support of some local political operatives like David Axelrod who combine traditional Chicago politics and corruption with far Left beliefs. Obama has been putty in the hands of these people as they stage managed every step of his career. His own political instincts tend to be disastrous, especially in the face of opposition or when the real world intrudes upon his hard to the Left world view. (A trillion-dollar stimulus didn’t improve the economy? Time for another trillion-dollar stimulus!) This gentleman is eminently beatable even by a poor candidate like Romney aka the Weathervane, for Romney will not be waging this campaign by himself. He will have two secret weapons: Obama’s proven ability to create havoc for himself when pressed and the results of Obama’s term of president, with a lousy economy just part of a catalogue of failure.

At one level Obama is a one trick political pony. He will always run a play from the Alinsky playbook. Identify and isolate your foe, attack ad hominen or straw man, and let your henchmen in the media and academia provide you cover.

On another level, Obama has materialized what was always beneath the surface of leftist dogma. The constitution must be discarded in favor of soft, mildly tolerable but despotic tyranny…..a tyranny which culturally deprives us of our vigor, our faith, our dignity.

The horrible possibility, which Obama sees, is that we may have reached the tipping point….if not this election then very soon. The left controls all the instruments of mass communications and influence–media, public education, government apparatus, higher academia. And the left relentlessly seeks to undermine the steadying cultural influences of family and faith. We have lost our moral override in the institutions which matter most. Game on.

And a majority of Americans understand that the Constitution is the only thing separating us from tyranny on one hand and barbarism on the other.

Great Britain, New Zealand, and Israel have managed to muddle through as neither barbarous nor tyrannical; they each have a body of constitutional law but no discrete charter. A number of European countries have gotten along with parliamentary constitutions which do not resemble ours. It happens.

Some conservatives have the mistaken belief that Obama is some sort of political genius and are running scared of him. This is a complete misunderstanding of Obama. Obama is a fairly haughty, out of touch snobbish Leftist, who moved to Chicago and embarked on a political career with the support of some local political operatives like David Axelrod who combine traditional Chicago politics and corruption with far Left beliefs. Obama has been putty in the hands of these people as they stage managed every step of his career.

Just as a thought exercise, I would wonder where GB, NZ or Isreal would be without the example, and bedrock support, of American Constitutionalism.

They have parliamentary systems, not separation-of-powers. The development of electoral and deliberative institutions in Britain predates that of the United States and those in New Zealand are derivative of Britain’s. All three countries have been under an American security umbrella at one time or another. Not sure how you figure the prowess of our military is derived from separation-of-powers.